


X marks the spot; X marks my home

by trashemdudes



Category: Logan - Fandom, Wolverine (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Relationship Study, have not ever read an x-men comic, i could watch logan carry charles bridal style for twenty million hours, if you read now it comes with a cliched quote from ol' Bob Frost, making up some history between them, this was written solely for my own closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 18:22:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10541970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashemdudes/pseuds/trashemdudes
Summary: Logan sees the kid screaming and chooses Charles.





	

_“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood....”_

 

Logan sees the kid screaming and chooses Charles.

He lopes up the stairs, willing to forget the kid like he forgot Caliban because life always makes him choose, and he chooses Chuck.

Looking back, it’s an old habit of his.

 

Logan barely remembers the first time he met Charles.

He only knows about it because Chuck told him, had to show him the actual memory to prove it to him that they’d met in that dimly lit, dingy bar. It’s a fond memory of a memory.

The beginning of them telling each other to fuck off.

He completely doesn’t remember the second time he met him in the DC building. He does, however, remember meeting a shaggy hippie. (Chuck tells him he’s not funny. Anna-Marie (smart, beautiful girl) has, at least, always been on Logan’s side for that one.)

The third time they meet is the charm: Charles no longer has his hair, and Logan’s brother is trying to murder him. Logan has to jump in front of Chuck to save his life - he doesn’t really know who the man is yet, doesn’t know that he’s Professor X, doesn’t care to know - and half only does it out of spite to his brother and the other half because it seemed fucked up to let a cripple get beat up again.

Logan, that day, chooses Chuck, and it all culminates in choosing to let his brother get thrown under the bus because Charles Xavier had looked Logan in the eyes and told him that he understood; it’s his brother.

There was no ego, no manipulative kindness in his words.

Chuck truly did and does understand.

Logan’s never been one for words, for emotions other than the chemically induced rage that’s the path carved deepest in his brain, the path of least resistance for him to go down now, but the thing is, even if Charles is a demanding shit, he’s never demanded that Logan be anything other than what he is. Just to be better, always better than what he is.

Chuck doesn’t budge an inch on that.

And it makes Logan think, want to say Oh. _Oh._

_So this is what it’s like._

 

It only takes a few days after those feelings (that Logan doesn’t understand, can’t explain or put into words at the time) crop up for Logan to realize that Charles irritates the shit out of him.

He’s a fucking manipulative bastard who electric slides along the gradient of grays like he still has legs he can use. And it’s all for his naive as fuck dreams of people, forget the divide between humans and mutants, working together.

Logan can’t deal with the infuriating man.

He tells Charles so, again and again, and takes his temper out on his too lavish furniture.

(Charles only suggests Logan take woodshop for better results.)

 

“Logan,” Anna-Marie smiles, running up to meet him by the lake where Logan’s sitting on Chuck’s used-to-be-favorite-tree-but-now-cyclop’s-first-tree-stump. (He’s says first because the out-of-control, egotistical idiot has wreaked so many more.)

“Hey,” Logan grunts.

“You got into another fight with the Prof?”

“Something like that.”

“Did you start it?” She’s a little punk.

Logan turns to her and says, “Getting uppity are we?”

“I’ve always been like this,” she says in her southern drawl before continuing, “I can’t imagine the Professor starting an argument.”

Logan snorts, “Yeah, well, he does. Just ask Cyclops or Beast.”

“Not Jean?” She queries a little too innocently.

Logan chooses to ignore the subtext and replies, “She thinks the world of the Prof. He's her teacher, and the only other person willing to connect with her about what it’s like to have their mutation.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Anytime mutations are brought up, Anna-Marie gets real quiet. Her guilt weaves around her like a veil, and it’s painfully obvious.

“That’s what family’s like though,” Logan continues gruffly, knowing he’s baring his belly even if Anna-Marie doesn’t see it (Charles always does, and his presumptuous pride in Logan does nothing to hide his amusement with Logan’s discomfort.) “You let their bad habits go and take care of them anyway; even if that bad habit is stowing away in someone else’s truck.”

She beams at that, her grin spreading in a slow constant motion, and leans into his shoulder, and Logan thinks that she likes him a little too much; in another train of thought, he also thinks that she’s been smiling more since she came here.

He thinks that Chuck’s naive ideals saved her.

 

Logan is the kind of guy that dislikes more things than he likes. Two things stand out though.

Logan doesn’t like Magneto - that’s an understatement of course. The man had weaved metal through Logan’s body and dumped him in a lake, so it’s a given that Logan wants to crush his tiny balls.

But it’s _over time,_ as Logan repeatedly sees the _look_ in Charles’ eyes every time he watches Magneto leave that Logan comes to think the man is worthless. (He watches for it nowadays on purpose, like he’s watching the sunset and the tide crash; it’s inevitable, and if nothing, someone should see it, recognize it or else it’d be buried it away as if it was never even there.)

(Prof doesn’t _cry_ , one of the students says after Logan makes a dry comment. Logan only takes another puff of his cigar.)

Logan doesn’t like when Chuck gets stiff and cold, like someone went wheelchair tipping and dumped Chuck into the deep end of manipulative-bastard.

And it’s always then, with Magneto and/or with his overblown sense of righteousness, where Charles’ actions and intent diverge the most for those in the splash zone.

Charles shoots himself in the fucking foot each time, and as expected from a cripple, doesn’t realize.

The worst part is Logan has to get involved because it’s Chuck, and despite all odds, Logan genuinely likes the man.

Between Chuck’s oblivious cruelty, he means well. He always means well.

 

Logan always comes back to her red hair, gentle voice, and warmth time and time again. It’s never really bothered him that she’s married to _him_ , but he just watches her and thinks, she could be his safe haven. He can picture it.

Logan’s spent more years alive than he wants to be, so he knows, when he sees her and the storm inside his head quiets to the gentle thrumming of rain, it’s luck. He’s lucky.

“Do you teach the kids too?”

Logan’s sitting in the classroom, Jean having just finished a conversation with Chuck after his class.

Jean smiles a little, gathering papers, “Yes, sometimes.”

“What do you teach them?”

“Control. Not to fear their powers.”

Logan raises his eyebrows and asks, his voice low, leaning in closer, “Not about, say, _science_ and the gravitational _pull_ between two bodies?”

She’s trying not to smile and doesn’t respond.

Logan says, tapping a number two pencil on the desk, “Didn’t know so many other brats had telepathy.”

“It’s not telepathy. All fear is the same,” she smiles, her telepathy naturally reaching out for that shared understanding about who they learned that from.

“When’d he teach you that?”

“Oh, say,” Jean says, tapping a pen to her lips, “after my tenth nightmare in the row.” She grins, “I think the other kids were getting tired of waking up to the walls melting.”

Logan grunts, accidentally snapping the pencil. He’s gnawing on it now because Jean doesn’t like the smell of smoke.

“When’d he teach _you_?”

Logan sits there in the two small desk-chair, the taste of paint and wood in his mouth, and says, “He showed me by example- then made a dry, self-deprecating joke after.”

Jean’s quiet, and if just for a moment, she’s exactly where Logan is. She loves Chuck. And Logan’s not above using that to stand in the same place as her, gazing out.

Because he flirts with her, jokes, follows her around, and he knows she’s amused and a little tempted, but at the end of the day, she goes back to Summers.

And at the end, Logan leaves the school, walking out to the distant gates. At that time, it’s always Chuck who greets him last.

“Come back soon, Logan,” says the voice in his head.

“Fuck off,” Logan mutters as he drives away on his motorcycle, revving the engine.

  

For Logan, loving someone had always been like being strangled slowly. It’s the feeling of all the blood and air being pushed to either side of his neck until he feels like he’s about to burst out through his eyeballs. To the point that he’s red in the face, tears leaking out. And that feeling just goes on and on and on.

It’s the feeling of being dangled on the edge of death.

And Logan’s never been one for auto-erotic asphyxiation (auto because he can’t really blame anyone but himself for the way he feels), but it’s tolerable.

But the fact of how he loves isn’t really important.

It’s just.

He’s sitting there under the heat of the weather, the seat digging into his ass, and he’s irritated, humoring Alzheimer’s-addled Charles. But his neck is still craned towards the back seat and that familiar figure.

He feels it so viscerally when he watches Charles, lucid for once, bring the horses in. Because hey. _Hey_ , there he is. There Chuck _is_.

 

When Logan goes back in time, Charles is like one of those old cats missing an eye, who will yowl and scratch your eyes out and wants to do absolutely fucking nothing but chew your arm off.

It’s endearing, and Logan wants to throw him into the lake outback.

He does the next best thing and throws the man, buck ass naked, into his cold marble tub.

He _washes_ his _hair_.

Charles is finally quiet after muttering about harassment and soap in his eyes, _complaining_ about every _little_ thing. He’s finally quiet, just looking down at his legs, head dropped, and from Logan’s angle, Charles is all sharp, tired lines.

Logan doesn’t know if it’s just his younger, idiot brain, but he drops the adjustable shower head to wrap an arm across Charles’ bare, soap-slippery chest and leans his head on Charles’ protruding shoulder.

_Please. Please let me save you._

Charles doesn’t.

He saves himself.

Logan doesn’t forget, the whole future changed when Chuck got his shit together.

 

Chuck has so much _faith_ ; he never doubts.

And that's why he can move forward.

 

If nothing, Logan's envious of Charles for that. His certainty. His righteousness.  

Because Logan doesn't have it.

 

It’s Logan’s face in front of Charles and Logan’s claws in Charles that kills the man.

Logan doesn’t want to know what Charles thought when he saw Logan standing above him. He doesn’t. But if it was a choice, Logan would beg for those memories from Chuck.

He’d beg for forgiveness like the pathetic man he is.

Because Logan’s been there the whole time, since the seven mutants at Westchester, and he’s been trying to prove to Charles and himself, that he’s there.

Logan knows what it’s like to hurt and what it’s like to feel alone, like the walls of that forbidden word are closing in around you, and he doesn’t want that for Chuck.

He just doesn’t believe it’s worked.

It just keeps echoing around in his head, Charles’ words

_You’re just waiting for me to die, aren’t you?_

Logan is and he isn’t.

Because he doesn’t want Chuck to die, but when Charles does finally kick the bucket, Logan can too. There is no one else in the world that he owes a debt to as great as he does Professor X, except maybe, the childish man under the facade of serenity.

So he does and he doesn’t, and the fact that he did at all, want that, burns, eating up his insides as though the adamantium isn’t already doing that for him, as he puts pressure on Charles’ wound and chants to the man that it wasn’t him, it wasn’t _him_ ; Logan’s done and would do so many fucked up things just to get through the day that there is no line, just a gradient, but this is something he would never do.

But he has no hard proof that it _is_ an absolute.

And Charles just stares at him with bright blue eyes that are fading as he asks after the Sunseeker.

Would he believe Logan if he said that he had wanted it too, wanted it so badly that he couldn’t breathe?

 

No, Logan wouldn’t either.

 

One of Logan’s clearest memories is at the Westchester manor, him and Charles sitting outside when it was too hot. All the kids were inside with the air conditioner blasting because Charles had been concerned about them getting heatstroke or being dehydrated.

But Charles, apparently, doesn’t give a fuck when it comes to Logan or himself.

They’re run out of topics after several hours, and it’s a peaceful lull that has Logan near dozing when Charles quietly clears his throat.

“You know, Logan...” Charles says, warmly, a little patronizingly, a little amused - the usual Chuck.

Logan grunts in response, sleepily.

“I love you.”

Logan grunts, adrenaline rushing through his veins. And then in an afterthought, the memory of Rogue sulking whenever he didn’t show enough affection in return appearing, offers an awe inspiring, affectionate — shrug.

Charles just laughs, and Logan closes his eyes.

Logan takes a drag of his cigar and reaches out to take the Professor’s hand into his own, placing their tangled hands on his thigh.

 

He later thinks of an appropriate comeback.

It’s “Sure you do” in as sarcastic a tone as he can manage.

It takes the other man a moment and then, Charles smiles at that as he responds quietly, with certainty, “Yes, Logan, I do.”

Logan doesn’t have a comeback. He never manages to think of one.

 

But then again, Logan's always been too slow when comes to things like this.

 

(He realizes later, while running like a madman through the forest, that Laura understands. Even if she might not have done the same. Even if- no, she hadn’t expected him to save her. She hadn’t expected a single thing. And even Logan wonders what it’s like to be so young and to hate yourself already. To be so young and to love someone who doesn’t deserve it. Kids. How stupid. How do you get attached to someone after only a week when they ignored or tried to ditch you half the time. Stupid. Stupid. _Stupid_.)

You shouldn’t cry over people like me, Logan had wanted to say. But he’d been dead by then. He supposed he was a deadbeat dad in more ways than one. Couldn’t even give his own kid one single life lesson.

Charles would’ve. He probably had.

 

Good ol’ Chuck.

What a stupid bastard.

 

At the beginning of the end, when Logan places Chuck in the water _tower,_ it's mainly for safety, but it's also the funniest joke Logan's seen in a while because Chuck is like a prissy princess; he belongs in a _fallen_ water tower even more because that’s every fairytale’s storyline. The princess where she doesn’t belong. Chuck doesn’t belong there, and Logan feels inadequate. Like he’s yelling Charles, Charles, let down your hair when he knows the man is fucking _bald_. It’s all because Charles belongs to life with his mind intact; Chuck carries a weight to him that’s lost to Alzheimer's now half the time, and what Logan’s doing isn’t fixing it. But he can’t stop trying. Because fuck.

 

Fuck.

 

Fuck. Fuck.  _Fuck._  Son of a _dirty_ motherfucking _bitch_.

 

That’s why.

 

In all their time together, Logan never explains his devotion.

He doesn’t ever even try to.

Charles never asks him to; doesn’t ask him for something so against who he is.

He just meets Charles’ eyes, and Logan knows: Charles can hear Logan screaming it inside.

Clear as a bell.

It goes a little like this: _you stupid, petty, arrogant, pathetic, naive man. you_ **_fucking_ ** _idiot._

It never fails to make Chuck smile.

 

(When the kid - his kid changes his cross into an X, Logan thinks it’s fitting. He’s dead. He doesn’t have a cross to bear anymore. Just an irritating old man to carry bridal style up the stairs to heaven so he can go have a romantic tryst with his archenemy - Logan’s pretty convinced that Magneto of all people would _not_ be there, but Chuck is one stubborn dick.

And Logan thinks that his kid, the one who grew up on comic books about the Wolverine and the X-men knows...that’s his home now; it’s been his home for a very long time, that place...

where X marks the spot.)

 

_“...and I...I took the one that involved carrying a cranky old fucker.”_

  
\-  James Logan Howlett


End file.
